Business

The 'Financial Times' Has a Secret Weapon: Data

For more than a century, publishers knew very little about their audiences: who they were, their interests and professions, or what other materials they were reading. Since newspapers went online two decades ago — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times all launched websites between 1995 and 1996 — publishers have been amassing a great deal of data about them, data the 125-year-old FT is using to hit record subscription levels and make its advertising products more competitive, its CEO says.

The FT enjoys a distinguished role in the sphere of financial news publications, namely for its commentary on UK and European markets and businesses, as well, of course, for the salmon pink tint of its print newspaper. Headquartered in London and edited by Lionel Barber, it employs more than 600 journalists worldwide and has an average daily readership of 2.1 million, a little less than the Wall Street Journal (though a subscription is about a quarter more expensive).

The paper finished 2012 with a record paid circulation of 602,000, up 28% from five years ago. For the first time, the number of digital subscriptions surpassed print at 316,000 versus 286,000.

Despite the increase in FT subscriptions — which start at $325 per year for digital-only access — the FT Group is only thinly profitable: Last year, the Group (a division that includes the FT as well as intelligence service Mergermarket and a 50% stake in The Economist Group, among other holdings) reported 11% operating profit on revenues of $568 million. In November, Bloomberg reported the division was up sale, but parent company Pearson quickly and repeatedly denied the report.

Using a Paywall to Gather Audience Data

Like other print publications, those that make up the FT Group have suffered from the general decline in print advertising revenue for the past decade and a half. Digital and mobile advertising have stemmed only some of the bleed, but in the last few years growth has come to a near standstill: In 2012, U.S. newspapers' digital ad revenue only grew by about 3%, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Since advertisers can no longer support them, publishers have looked to readers for revenue growth and profit, sparking the rapid adoption of online paywalls beginning with the New York Times in 2011. The Alliance for Audited Media estimates that nearly half of U.S. newspapers now have some sort of paywall or metered access model.

The FT was well ahead of this trend, introducing a metered access model in 2007. Today, subscriptions make up more than half of the FT Group's revenue, while advertising only accounts for 39%, down from 52% in 2008. At the FT specifically, advertising once made up as much as 70% of yearly revenue. This year, the paper expects to generate more money from subscriptions than from advertising.

"That's a big deal in the transformation of our business model," John Ridding, CEO of the FT, said in a sit-down interview at Pearson's U.S. headquarters last month. Ridding (pictured top) joined the FT from the editorial side, reporting abroad from Paris and Korea before taking on a series of executive positions, including editor and publisher of FT Asia. He was named chief executive of the paper in 2006, assuming the CEO role of the entire FT Group for the first time this month.

I asked Ridding how the FT was able to increase its subscriber levels by more than a quarter in the last five years. "It's sort of a combination of art and science," he says. "Five or six years ago we started a new media model, charging for access through a metered system. When we started doing that, it was primarily to build a revenue stream online, but probably what was more important over time was the data and customer insight that that gave us. That's what transformed the business," he says.

Looking through some of the reader data — the FT's data team now numbers more than 30 across three groups — the FT was able to recognize the kinds of patterns readers display before purchasing subscriptions. "We would see the sort of articles they were reading and the frequency they were reading those articles, for instance, and we began to map those," Ridding explains. "People do behave in predictable ways."

While online paywalls are often perceived as a way to keep non-paying readers out, the FT has viewed them as a way to bring new readers in. The FT.com asks users to register to read up to eight articles per month for free. It's here that the FT collects much of its information. Registrants — there are more than 5 million of them — are required to declare their e-mail, zip code, industry, job responsibility and position level. Those who register are, of course, more likely to become full subscribers in the future.

Ridding says the data-driven approach is transforming its marketing and advertising, too. The data collected from registrants allows advertisers to target campaigns to, say, executives in the U.S. aerospace industry, or HR department heads in India. Added to this is a proprietary reporting tool called Deep View, which offers "the most" insight into advertising campaigns and how they perform compared to its competitors', the FT says. (One media buying manager we spoke to confirmed this assessment, noting it is only available for direct, and not programmatic, ad buys.) During and after campaigns, advertisers can see who has seen or clicked on a campaign, and the optional placement and time of days to run the ads, "giving them the option to reassess mid-campaign, switch creative and retarget," a spokesperson explains.

"We can prove in real-time quite effectively what advertising is working and put that data in front of advertisers," says Ridding. "Marketers have to justify every cent of what [they're] spending. Our job is to provide the tools and information to justify that decision for running a campaign with the FT rather than anyone else." Technology companies like Google and Twitter, as well as publications like The New York Times, already offer live reporting capabilities, but the demographic data (industry, job title, etc.) is particularly unique, the buyer observed.

Data's Role in Editorial

Since enforcing on-site registration, the FT has gathered not only a vast amount of data about who its readers are and how to sell subscriptions and ads to them — the paper also knows a good deal about what they read and when, as well as the kinds of editorial products that appeal to them.

The FT's newsroom is still tethered to the rhythms of the daily print cycle, working evening shifts and publishing the vast majority of its stories early morning UK time. But traffic levels, which are highest during the day, suggest readers are looking for fresh information beyond the early morning hours.

"The FT has been around 125 years, and a lot of the process and structure that has built up over that time no longer reflects the needs of our readers," Ridding observes. "The core of our 'digital first' initiative is really moving resources to front-end digital editing and publishing. We're moving more staff from nighttime to daytime, deploying our energy and resources and at the times our readers want it."

As part of a move away from this cycle, Lionel Barber, editor of the FT, announced in January that 25 staff positions would be eliminated, and 10 more people would be hired to fill digital roles. In a memo e-mailed to staff, Barber said the FT needs to serve a digital platform first, and a newspaper second.

That doesn't mean the FT is moving towards becoming a 24/7 wire service. "We're never going to be a wire service, that's not our job, not what makes us different and special," says Ridding. "Nevertheless, I think what people want is to go to any of our channels at any time, and find what the editorial brain thinks is the most significant story at that time." He adds, "Things evolve and change and happen during the business day. We have to be reflecting those changes."

To help deliver on that mission, the FT is planning to release a new online section called "Fast FT," which will provide real-time market commentary around the clock. Ridding emphasizes (again) that it's not a wire service, seeking instead to deliver analysis and context to the news, not just the news itself.

Ridding says the FT is also focused on connecting with readers, building and deepening the communities that form around its content. "A lot of our readers are serious experts in their fields. We want to create really high-level, informed conversations with them and us."

To do that, Ridding and his team are developing a series of tools to share and discuss content. One, called FT Newslines, is a premium service that allows business school professors and students to create and share annotations in the margins of articles, bringing together insight from a single professor or class, or across a range of experts from different schools, depending on users' individual settings.

One data area the FT is cautious in monitoring is pageviews. Ridding says the organization is "aware" of traffic numbers, but believes their importance is sometimes overweighted. "Our industry got itself into all sorts of problems focusing on reach alone,"he says. "Broad measures of traffic don't cut it in our world. Depth of our relationship, frequency of visits, readership, return on those readers... [That's] what advertisers and more sophisticated players are increasingly [focused on]."

"That being said, when we see a particular resource getting a lot of attention, like commodities over the past few years, it helps us make decisions about [coverage] in different sectors," he adds. "But we have to be very careful. People subscribe and read because they want trusted judgment of experienced editors. For us that's what the FT stands for, that will never change."

The data the FT has collected and analyzed through its metered access paywall has affected its business in myriad ways, helping the organization find sources of new revenue (subscriptions) in a weak and volatile ad market, improved the targeting and reporting of its ad products, and informed the development of new editorial offerings. But in some areas — like traffic — data can only inform so far; for the rest, the FT must rely on the news judgment that made it prominent in the first place.

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